                  
|
Seaboard Air Line 10-wheeler #683 prepares to head east from Union Station in September 1939. Credit: C.E. Rutledge/Big Four Graphics
|
Overview
The Railpark is envisioned as a mixed-use recreational destination blending interpretation, education, entertainment, hospitality, dining and retail in an immersive environment themed to railroad history in the greater Montgomery area. The storyline-driven experience will be woven around and throughout the restored Western Railway of Alabama yards, adaptively re-using several of the original extant structures and re-creating many that were removed subsequent to abandonment of the site in the late nineteen sixties.
|
The newly configured Railpark also incorporates the AmeriCold refrigeration building and warehouse adjacent to the south end of the property, to be transformed into a combined media and film entertainment venue, an unusual interpretive presentation of refrigeration history and technology, administrative and educational facilities and a "visible storage" archive for rail-related artifacts.
Designed to attract both a residential and tourist audience, the Alabama Railpark offers over twenty-five thousand square feet of specialty food and retail, a colorful restaurant/cafe, an operating roundhouse and turntable, both static and dynamic presentations of rolling stock, machinery, archival material and artifacts, all of which annotate a continuous story of the people whose lives were inexorably intertwined with the railroad, from the middle of the nineteenth century, through the War Between the States, Emancipation, Reconstruction and the changing economic, political and social landscape of the twentieth century.
Rail travel at the Railpark will not only be interpreted, but experienced, both on- and off-site. Transportation from the site to the restored Union Station, the logical focus of tourism in Montgomery for the foreseeable future, will be accomplished by frequently scheduled light rail and/or interurban vehicles.
Excursions are planned to the east, over tracks that lead past the historic Oakwood Cemetery, west to Selma and northeast to Tuskegee.
Phase I of the project is scheduled to be accomplished over a period of two years from the inception of funding, at a capital cost of approximately $30 million. Current projections anticipate annual visitation in the first stabilized year of operation at 110,000 to 130,000.
The project is the vision of Old Alabama Rails, a 501C3, not-for-profit corporation, comprised of past and current Montgomery residents committed to preservation and restoration of the WofA site. After reviewing a variety of development options, the Board of OAR determined to proceed in the direction outlined above. This determination was motivated in large measure by a mandate for economic sustainability on which all public attractions must be based if they are to survive the intense competition for attendance between educational and recreational attractions throughout the nation. In addition, the approach is responsive to the scarcity of quality dining, shopping and entertainment in the downtown area. As has been the case in many areas of the country, the transition of the urban population to the suburbs spawned a relocation of services and businesses to those areas, leaving many urban centers devoid of these facilities. The current trend towards a return to urban living carries with it a need for these very same resources. In so far as possible the Alabama Railpark seeks to fulfill that need.
| Overview | Existing Conditions | Project Description |
| Development Plans | Economics | Conclusion |
|
|
